HOME | DD
Gulliver63 — Firebird...
Published: 2011-06-14 02:25:41 +0000 UTC; Views: 1813; Favourites: 17; Downloads: 49
Redirect to original
Description
I was just in Aspellgoof's gallery and spotted a picture of her brother's car. I was reminded that a part of our gallery must reflect our lives. If you will indulge me...I was with my parents when they bought this 1967 Pontiac Firebird new in Batavia, Ohio. I was very young, in nursery school, but I remember it. As my mother put it, "It was expensive, but we bought it anyway"(it was $6,000 - we got that much out of it when we finally sold it in 1982). I not only grew up with this car, but got to drive it as a high school student. It had a 442 Catalina engine under the hood...it would roar like a World War II fighter plane when you stomped on the gas pedal. It was little more than a gigantic engine with a few seats thrown in behind it. My grandfather briefly owned it, and boy would he tear ass in the thing. Oh, God...the memories...going to Stone Lick Lake with the top down...riding with my mother on the east side of Cincinnati. I have actually seen this car twice here in Indy in recent years. Take a peak at the Velma picture on my homepage...that's a part of my life there. The photo was shot on Illinois Street in Indianapolis in 1982 - behind the wheel is my dad, John Fitzpatrick...long may you ride, pops...BTW, here is a picture of the same car when we where kids, shot around 1970 gulliver63.deviantart.com/art/…
Related content
Comments: 18
Beautiful! I love this photo because of the nostalgia of it all!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I got to drive that beast when I was around 20. To put it in my late mother's words, "We couldn't afford it, but we bought it anyway. I was with my parents when they first picked it up in Batavia, Ohio - it's still driving around Indianapolis somewhere, as I've seen it (you can still see this dolphin-shaped area on the back bumper where we had a Marineland sticker).
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Nice! And that's great.
Also I have a poll in my Poll section if you would like to vote, I always love seeing how many people I can find that are over 30 here. This site is overrun with so many young people, I never find those to connect with that are older like me.
It's titled "My Older Deviants Are..." (If you ever have time to look)
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
::chuckles:: I turned 30 in 1993.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
hearsegurl.deviantart.com/jour…
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
XDDD
I am no longer 30, but that comment made me giggle!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I can still remember my fifth grade teacher practically cursing under her breath as she pumped gas that the price was 43 cents a gallon - she was so disgusted that it was that high. She had a cool car, a silver Datsun 240Z.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
LOL, I bet, but don't we wish it was that price now?
And that's awesome!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very good memories...that's my late father behind the wheel.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
And here I thought that my Dad and I were the only ones. My Dad also bought a 1967 Firebird convertible back when I was 12 years old. I used that car a lot for dates in high school. At the age of 19 I bought it from my Dad and we had a rule about the Firebird... if either of us sold it we had to offer it back to the other first. I say "if either" because Dad owned it 5 times and I owned it 4 times (for different reasons each time). Ours was light yellow/ black top and had a 3.8-liter overhead cam inline six with a Two-speed Powerglide automatic. It eventually got repainted (by my Dad in the 80's) to a cream (off-white) with a white top (not my choice but it still looked good). The third time that I owned it I picked up a 69' that needed engine work (for around $300). The few parts that were common between the two were mint on the 69' and it also had the Pontiac rally wheels with the Firebird (not PDM) hubs. I ended up getting 3X my money back out of the 69' after I stripped it, then parted out what I couldn't use. The wheels alone were worth the $300.
We never sold it to the other for more than around $800 because it was never about the money... it was just how we were able to keep sharing a car that we both loved so much. The offer was turned back to me in 2005 when the car was ready for some work as Dad just wasn't driving it that much and it was starting to show. I wasn't in a position then to put the time or money into it that it would take to recondition it properly and so we both searched for someone who could and would. The car sold for $8500 in 2005. The new owner had it stripped, dipped, re-chromed and rebuilt it to better than new. Sorry to ramble on about details but my memories of "The FIrebird" will glow within me forever. If you're like me (I'm sure you are) you notice that vent window every time one appears on TV or in a movie and you want to shout... "THATS A 67' FIREBIRD"!!! Maybe I'll scan and post an old photo of ours in the next few weeks. I'll give you a shout back if/when I do. BTW... a 442 Catalina engine... now that's screaming.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That would be cool. My mother used to drive that car around the Cincinnati area, and I used to have one of those kids steering wheels mounted on a little instrument panel. I was with her when she blew a tire off of 32 and Batavia Pike, probably around 1969. Our car, if still around, is most likely in the Indianapolis area; I've seen it twice in recent years, identifying it by the outline of an old Marineland sticker on the back bumper. Dad did some repairwork to it, replacing a spider gear in the transmission in the 1980's.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
My father didn't want to start having to pump money into it. When you consider that we bought it for 6 grand in 1967, and sold it for nearly the same amount in the 1980's, we did pretty good. Pops wanted to sell it back in 1972 when we moved to Arizona, but they only wanted to pay him a few hundred dollars - we just let my grand dad drive it for a while. Thanks for letting me share - that car was a huge part of our lives (as far as I know, it is still driving around Indianapolis somewhere. I would be able to spot it from the old dolphin shaped Marineland bumper sticker on the back bumper).
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
It was one of the true "muscle-cars" here in America...you can see one driven by Jada Pinklett-Smith in "Matrix Reloaded" in that great freeway scene where she rescues Morpheus. There is also one in the Steve McQueen classic "Bullitt" as he's tearing around the hills of San Francisco in his Mustang. It wasn't as pretty as the Camaro, but it was impressive nonetheless. My mother has told me that numerous people wanted to race her as she drove around Cincinnati in this thing...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
interesting. i've not seen one of those over here (i guess there are probably some), just some other muscle cars.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
They're hard to spot anymore...I saw one a couple of summers ago in Brownsburg, and it was probably the first one I'd seen in nearly 20 years. I think they made a lot more of the Chevrolet Camaro.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0